Passage

2 Peter 2.4

"For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment;" (2 Peter 2:4, NASB95)

Peter opens a triplet of judgment-precedents (angels, the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah) to assure his readers that false teachers will not escape. The interest of the verse is not chiefly disciplinary but cosmological: it asserts a class of angels who sinned, were imprisoned, and are awaiting final judgment. The verb the NASB95 renders "cast into hell" is in fact a single Greek word, tartarōsas, "having Tartarus-ed them," the only place in the Bible where the Greek mythological term Tartarus appears, used here for the underworld prison of the rebel angels. The passage pairs with Jude 6 and behind both stands the Second Temple Watchers tradition rooted in Genesis 6.4 and elaborated in 1 Enoch.

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

"2. And many shall follow their lascivious doings; by reason of whom the way of the truth shall be evil spoken of. 3. And in covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose sentence now from of old lingereth not, and their destruction slumbereth not."

"4. For if God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;"

"5. and spared not the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6. and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, having made them an example unto those that should live ungodly;" (2 Peter 2:2-6, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"2. Many will follow their immoral ways, and as a result, the way of the truth will be maligned. 3. In covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words: whose sentence now from of old doesn't linger, and their destruction will not slumber."

"4. For if God didn't spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved for judgment;"

"5. and didn't spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly; 6. and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly;" (2 Peter 2:2-6, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"2. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. ^{pernicious ways: or, lascivious ways, as some copies read} 3. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not."

"4. For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;"

"5. And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6. And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly;" (2 Peter 2:2-6, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"2. and many shall follow out their destructive ways, because of whom the way of the truth shall be evil spoken of, 3. and in covetousness, with moulded words, of you they shall make merchandise, whose judgment of old is not idle, and their destruction doth not slumber."

"4. For if God messengers who sinned did not spare, but with chains of thick gloom, having cast [them] down to Tartarus, did deliver [them] to judgment, having been reserved,"

"5. and the old world did not spare, but the eighth person, Noah, of righteousness a preacher, did keep, a flood on the world of the impious having brought, 6. and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah having turned to ashes, with an overthrow did condemn, an example to those about to be impious having set [them];" (2 Peter 2:2-6, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: Peter the Apostle
Audience: Christian believers (general; likely overlapping the readership of 1 Peter)
Location: composed in Rome, in Peter's final period
Time period: c. AD 64-68, shortly before Peter's martyrdom

Theological reading

The verbal force is in the participle tartarōsas and its accompanying participial chain. Peter does not merely say God cast the sinning angels into "hell" generically; he uses Tartarus, a term loaded with Greco-Roman cosmological meaning as the deepest pit beneath Hades, where the Titans were chained in classical myth. The choice is deliberate: Peter is writing to a Hellenistic audience and is using their cosmological vocabulary to communicate that Israel's God has his own equivalent of that lowest dungeon, and the rebel angels are in it. This is not syncretism but appropriation: Peter borrows the term and rewires its referent.

Which angels are in view? The natural reading, given the parallel with Jude 6 (angels who "did not keep their proper domain" and are bound under chains until judgment), is the Watchers tradition rooted in Genesis 6.1-4 and developed in 1 Enoch. The "sons of God" of Genesis 6 are read as angelic beings who transgressed their assigned boundary, with their imprisonment in Tartarus following as judgment. Second Temple Jewish literature (1 Enoch, Jubilees) reads Genesis 6 this way, and the parallels with Jude 6 and the explicit Enoch citation in Jude 14.15 make it the most historically likely reading of what Peter assumes.

Three apologetic notes. First, the textual question is settled: 2 Peter 2:4 is well attested across the manuscript tradition; the Tartarus reading is not a textual variant but the original. The hapax legomenon status of tartarōsas in the New Testament should not be confused with manuscript instability. Second, the use of a Greek mythological term is a cross-cultural communicative move, not a metaphysical concession; comparable to Paul citing Greek poets at Mars Hill (Acts 17.28). Third, the verse provides the New Testament's most direct anchor for the doctrine that some angelic fall preceded human history's central drama, that those who fell are presently restrained, and that they await final judgment alongside the wicked. This is part of the theodicy framework that distinguishes Christian theism from a deistic God who has no enemies and no opponents.

Key words

G5020 - tartaroo, tartaroō (Strong's G5020), the only NT use of "to cast into Tartarus."
G2920 - krisis, krisis (Strong's G2920), the judgment for which the angels are reserved.
G2316 - theos, theos (Strong's G2316), God as the agent of the casting-down.

Theological themes

Angelic rebellion as historical event. Some angels sinned and were judged; the Bible treats this as datum, not myth.
Tartarus as cosmological prison. A reserved holding-place for rebel angels distinct from the lake of fire (Revelation 20.10).
Watchers tradition's NT footprint. Genesis 6 + 1 Enoch background standing behind Peter and Jude.
Judgment as deferred but certain. The angels are reserved; the verdict is rendered, the sentencing is pending.
Argument-from-precedent against false teachers. If God did not spare angels, He will not spare unrepentant human teachers.

Cross-references

Jude 6, the closest NT parallel; same Watchers framework.
Genesis 6.1-4, the Sons-of-God passage Second Temple literature elaborates into the Watchers narrative.
Jude 14.15, Jude's direct citation of 1 Enoch's prophecy.
Matthew 25.41, "eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels," confirming a class-specific eschatological judgment.
Revelation 20.10, the final disposition of the devil after the present restraint ends.

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.